After unplugging it from my computer I placed it upside down so the Bull could flow out of it. After I wiped it down I plugged it in and it still worked. I used it the rest of the day without a hitch.

When I came in this morning I did not think about yesterdays baptism in the Bull until I tried to come to this website and was typing my name. The R was slow to some back up after being pressed and so I need to perform some surgery on my keyboard.

I ended up popping off the a Shift key, plus the T, R, and E keys. I rinsed each key and its little plastic spring with water and wiped the inside of the key socket. While those keys are now nice and responsive I have noticed that the G key is also acting sluggish so it looks like I will need to pop it off as well.

I wish I could just throw this thing in the dish washer and take care of it in one swoop.

P.S. This post has caused me to add a new category named "Doh!".

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When moving into the new house the new iMac was placed in our room on my wife’s desk. At the time I did not have my office downstairs because my brother-in-law was staying with us. About a month after we moved in he moved out and I had my office back but opted to get a 22” monitor to hook up to my laptop from work. I used the iMac from time-to-time upstairs but never really got to play with it.

As mentioned before I purchased my wife an Acer Aspire One and for convenience I hooked it up in my office to my 22” monitor so she could use it down stairs. While it was usable the Acer Aspire One is a Netbook and obviously is no where as powerful as the iMac. In talking to my wife she thought that maybe it would be better to switch the two computers so that the iMac is downstairs in my office . Sure babe we can do that I told her .

That conversation took place on late Wednesday night and you know the first thing that I did when I got home last night – yep, I switched the computers.

I have to say that it looks so nice sitting on my desk. As good as the performance of the iMac is it is also a beautiful looking computer. The other thing is that is awesome about it is that the screen is huge. While it is only 2 inches larger then the monitor I had there the 22” monitor was wide screen so it was not as high. The iMac is not a wide screen so the height of the screen is much more noticeable.

Now here comes the true confession. One of the real reasons that I wanted the iMac in the first place was in order to play games on it. I have Boot Camp setup with Windows XP and have Call of Duty 4 installed. With the computer in our room I only got to play a few times in the last 6 months. Now I should be able to play much more often. The only trick is not to get myself in trouble with my wife .

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I did a quick Google search of “u-verse dns slow” and found that a lot of people were having the same issue. I guess 2Wire who is the provider of the wireless router that U-verse uses doesn’t officially support Macs. From my research it seems to be related to IPv6 DNS queries that only Macs use or something like that.

Anyway, out of everything that I found everyone recommended switching the DNS servers to the ones at OpenDNS. I signed up for a free account and hard coded their servers in my Macbook. The difference was like night and day. I have never seen my U-verse internet so quick. I quickly rushed to my iMac and changed its servers as well. Same thing, nice and fast.

I was (and now am) a happy camper .

Here are the links to the search and the sites that help me come up with this resolution:

• Google Search: http://www.google.com/search?q=u-verse+dns+slow&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
• DSL Reports – Slow Google Maps: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22813876-slow-load-google-maps-since-uverse-yes-its-the-RGs-DNS
• DSL Reports – U-verse 2Wire Wireless + Apple Problem & Solution: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21748105-Uverse-2Wire-Wireless-Apple-Problem-Solution

Finally here is the link to Open DNS:

• Open DNS Leopard setup instructions: https://www.opendns.com/homenetwork/start/device/apple-osx-leopard

I have not figured out if I need to or should download their client software yet. My system seems to be working fine without it.

You can still check out my other solution below as it still may help you out.

I had not used my MacBook at home under OS X for a while because it had temporarily became my main computer at work using Windows XP under Boot Camp. A few nights ago I booted it into OS X to do some browsing and the internet was so slow under OS X that I rebooted into Windows XP (Sad, I know ). I had experienced the same type of slow connections before at Starbucks but could never figure out the cause.

Tonight I had the same issue and was determined to figure out what was going on. There were a few suggestions out their about renewing your IP Address and rebooting your system, which I tried to no avail. Others said to reinstall OS X to try to fix it which I thought was going to far. Finally someone suggested changing the channel that your router was broadcasting on to try to fix it.

Previously I had a Linksys router that in between it and my computer was a microwave. Every time the microwave would go on I would lose my internet connection. When the microwave turned off the internet would come back on. While investigating that issue someone had suggested changing the channel on the router to a higher channel and sure enough that worked for the microwave issue.

I am happy to say that changing the channel on my Airport Extreme router fixed my MacBook slow Wifi issue as well.

The place to change it in the Airport settings was under Airport and then Wireless and then about half way down is the channel selector. Mine was set to Automatic and was on channel 1. I selected channel 10 and then once the Airport rebooted I had a speedy internet connection on my MacBook via Wifi.

This obviously won’t help me at Starbucks but it is possible that if I have this same issue that I can call their tech support and they can hopefully VPN in to change the channel. I had issues with T-Mobile at Starbucks before and their tech people helped me out so I would hope that AT&T would do the same.

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I have seen a drastic increase in 3G availability and signal strength since the update. At my house I would usually have only one bar for 3G or full bars for Edge. Now I have four solid bars of 3G everywhere in my house.

The other significant differences that I have seen are that my contacts, SMS, and camera all load up a whole lot quicker (the camera could still be quicker though in my opinion).

My wife had been having trouble with her 3G in that it would not want to check here Gmail account. She would sometimes have to reboot it to get it to work. I updated her phone this morning and she has not had the problem since.

I think Apple may have gotten the 3G to the point of stability that my 2G phone was when I first got it (I got it about 2 1/2 months after they came out). When I got it the updates that Apple pushed out were feature updates as opposed to bug fixes.

I hope it is smooth sailing from here on out .

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Anyway, the guys that developed the iPhone video recorded recently updated it to run on the 2.0+ firmware so I took the plunge and used QuickPWN to jailbreak my 3G iPhone. It was pretty simple to do and I was able to find the video camera app on Cydia and install it. The only hitch I encountered was that my unlock code that I had purchased does not work on this latest version of the video camera app. I have a support email into them for a new code so I can take video past their 30 second trial block.

One of the feature of the video camera app is the ability to upload your videos directly to YouTube from your iPhone. I shot the below video on my 2G iPhone a while back:

While it’s not the best resolution and is only recorded at 15fps it is still pretty cool. Also YouTube does it’s un-magic my re-encoding it to the Flash format which is not all that great. When I download the original mp4 files down to my computer and view them there they actually look pretty good. I really hope that either the iPhone Video Recorder team or Apple come out with a video app that can do at least 24fps as that would really be nice.

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I, as so many others, have had some pretty major issues with reception my iPhone. This became so much more evident while I was in the Bay area last week. I already new that 3G coverage in and around the San Mateo area was not good but my experience at SFO was terrible.

At SFO I was grabbing a bite to eat while waiting for my flight and had placed my phone on the table. I sat there and watched it for about 2-3 minutes as it continuously looped from Edge to 3G to data roaming to No Service. All of this with me touching it only to revive the screen from sleeping. Seeing this caused me to understand why people are so frustrated. The words “Class Action Lawsuit” quickly sprang to my mind in thinkng about how widespread this issue may be.

Although I was having those crazy issues with my phone a chalked it up to a California funky infrastruture and quickly forgot about it since I was heading home to Austin. Historically my reception in Austin has been great, that is until yesterday.

Yesterday I am having lunch and have full 3G bars but cannot get a web page to load to save my life. I reboot the phone and same thing – full bars and no web pages will load. I hung my head in defeat and went back to work.

All of this leads up to the 2.0.2 update last night and thus my mad dash to install it.

From the get go I can see that things are more responsive and zippier. I did have the app crash issue but I have had that with the last 2 updates. To fix it all I need to do is download and install a new app and then all of them work (it us still a bug but that is a quick work around).

This morning it seems that the phone does not switch between Edge and 3G as quickly and will not sit there on 1 bar if 3G for ever. I am definitley getting more Edge coverage where 3G is weak. It seems that the phone is holding on and keeping a good signal longer. The AT&T network seems to be more stable here in Austin so this update seems like it is good for us. I have seen other folks report that things are worse for them so it seems that it just depends where you are located (like always).

All in all I still live my iPhone and it is the best phone I have ever had. I know these issues are just from this technology being so new. I remember my first dial-up and DSL services. They were terrible as well when they first came out but they stablized over time. I expect this to as well (Although I do remember a Class Action Lawsuit against AOL for over selling there service which caused people not to be able to get online :-p ).

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The first was that I took the Mac Mini out of my son’s room and put it in my office which is downstairs. He had been playing too many video games and although they were educational we noticed that he was not that interested in regular toys as much. A four year old that wants to play video games and not with toys can be tough to handle.

With the Mac Mini downstairs my wire then had a computer to do small tasks with without going upstairs (the kids can be easier to handle downstairs. I asked her whether she felt that we still need the Wind and she said no.

All of that lead up to us being on vacation last week and my birthday happen to be on that Monday. I mentioned to her whether she would mind if I got it and she said sure. I waited for 2 hours last Saturday night and scored a black 8GB model.

I have to say that I really like it. The GPS came in really handy on our vacation and the 3G was fast where you could get it (3G coverage is terrible in Northern California compared to the Austin area). The other thing I like about it is the plastic back instead of the aluminum one of the first generation. I had a rubber case on my first generation one because it was so slippery. With this one I don’t have a case and do not plan to get one.

All in all I am glad that I got it. I have already sold my 1st generation iPhone and my wife has already put in her order (with me) for a 3G. We are thinking of giving her phone (unactivated) to my son as a gaming console since he has taken a liking to a couple of games that I have loaded on my phone from the App Store. We will see about that .

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What has caught my eye recently is the slew of Mini Laptops that have been coming out lately. The first to catch my eye was the Asus Eee PCwhich is a mini laptop with a 9″ screen. HP also has their HP 2133 Mini-Noteand Dell has announced that they are coming out with one in a while. This seems to be the trend from all of the major manufacturers now.

You may be asking what is a mini laptop and why have one?

Well first a mini laptop is one that has a sub 12″ screen so it is small enough to fit in a purse or easily in a backpack. At around 2-3lbs it is really light. To give you a feel for their size they are about the same size as a portable DVD player. They are not designed as a primary machine but for basic email, web browsing, and your occasional game or movie.

The biggest pull of these types of laptops are their price. The baseline Eee PC will run you $299 with Linux on it. I believe Windows XP will run you another $50-$100. I actually got to see and touch a Eee PC at an HEB grocery store (go figure) about a month ago. My first impress was that it is really small which is good and bad. Every review that I have read has said that yes, the keyboard is small, but you get used to it. Again, these are not meant to be a primary computer. They are for casual computing (weird huh?).

Anyway, the Eee PC was the 9″ screen version and was a little too small for me. Also, the one that I saw in the store already had a key broken off of it so that does not bode well in my book. I figure a month in a store can equal 6-months to a year of real use and a broken key is not a good sign. I have kids after all and need something that withstand their terror if it should be captured.

Anyway MSI has also throw their hat into the ring with the MSI Winda 10″ model that looks remarkably close to a mini Macbook. In fact I first became aware that the MSI Wind existed when Gizmodo reported that a user had already got OS X working on it – nice . The other item that really perked my ears up was that it uses a standard 2.5″ laptop hard drive. Most of the other minis use a solid state drive which is kind of cool but I have a Hitachi 7200RPM hard drivesitting around that would love to go into a mini like this (I current have the same type of drive in my MacBook and it rocks!).

The other great part is that I mentioned my interest in the mini to my wife and she was really excited about it. Since we moved into our new house we have 2 stories and her computer is up in our room. When she is downstairs with the kids she can’t do any blogging (although she can do basic browsing/email on her iPhone).

The only downside (if you can call it that) is that the MSI Wind starts at $499. It is more then the Eee PC but I think you are getting some great benefits for the extra money you are spending(10″ screen, 2.5″ standard hard drive). It is scheduled to come out on July 7th and since my B-day is a week after that…  You get the picture.

I know I will get more use out of the Wind then the 3G iPhone and look forward to doing a hards-on review once I get it.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPhone 3G, Apple, Asus, Eee PC, HP 2133 Mini-note, MSI Wind, Hitachi

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I scored a 24″ previous generation iMac on CraigsList about a month ago that came with an Apple Mouse and Keyboard. From day 1 the mouse would once in a while scroll up but never scroll in any other direction. This was my first Apple mouse and figured that I was not doing something right so I didn’t mess with it.

I finally got fed up with it and tried blowing it out with my air compressor. I tried the old “Press down on it hard and try to scroll” with no luck. Then I remembered the old school method of cleaning the wheels on the old ball mice and it was with a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol.

I did a quick search and saw in the comments of a thread that someone else used alcohol as well. I Tired it myself and it worked!

This is what I did:

• Unplugged the mouse from the computer
• Got some tissue paper and folded it over a few times to make it thick
• I then dowsed the tissue paper with rubbing alcohol until it was saturated
• I turned the mouse upside down and rubbed the scroll ball in a circular motion and back and forth for about a minute

After doing these steps I looked at the tissue paper and sure enough some gunk came out. I plugged it back into my computer and it was nice and peppy!

Note: Some people mentioned using water as opposed to the rubbing alcohol but I think the rubbing alcohol is better because it will evaporate quicker.

Technorati: Apple, iMac, Apple Mouse, Scroll Bar, Tips and Tricks

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